Urban Taskforce: ‘Quick, let’s sign up naïve Barry O’Farrell to our backlog of highrise before Sydneysiders find out, under the Libs we’ll make a killing!’
The revenue arm of the New South Wales Government, disguised as the ‘Independent Pricing and Regulatory Tribunal’ (IPART), continues to jack up prices for Government Treasury. In July 2012 IPART increased electricity prices by up to 18%. In June 2012 IPART authorised increases to water and sewerage charges by $72 for Sydney households and $134 for apartments. A the same time, IPART has allowed a number of local councils across NSW to increase their rates by up to 7% and allowed retail gas prices to jump by up to 15%.
All the while Sydney’s annual inflation rate is just 3.1% (3.0% nationally) and real wages are decreasing. And so many are forced closer to the breadline.
Lately IPART has taken a peculiar dislike to local councils charging ‘developer levies’ to fund associated urban infrastructure. You know – like roads, footpaths, electricity, gas, water, broadband, access to motorway gridlock.
So when when billionnaire familia property developers like Führerprinzip Triguboff (alias Meriton), or Bezzina, Thakral, Armenian Hyecorp, and Grollos don’t get their way under Labor, they have some serious construction catching up to do under the Liberals.
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| Triguboff’s Quarter Acre Block – fully utilised |
So with their developer-donated Libs on the throne, Brad Hazzard as O’Farrell’s Lib Planning Minister has become familia developers’ man of the moment. Construction waits for no man!
That’s where the ‘independent regulator’ comes in – it’s not what you know, but who you know. So IPART ‘reviews’ council charges on property developers, with more price rises for ratepayers in its sights.
Half the cost of infrastructure for new property development is to be lumped on to existing ratepayers.
Then Hazzard comes out: ”It’s time to look at alternative ways of raising necessary funds and the IPART recommendation will have a high priority in terms of government consideration.” So then Hazzard can press release: ‘we are just following IPART’. (Yeah right).
IPART argues: ‘well Sydney Water imposes a levy on all householders to pay for installing pipes in new areas, and the government is known to be looking at this model.’
What is happening is government is taxing local ratepayers to the brink. On top of exorbitant increases to the price of basic essentials, government wants ratepayers to now also fund massive property development. That property development is predominantly to house new immigrants.
Developer lobby group, Urban Development Institute of Australia puts its two bob’s worth in: ”The current system of funding infrastructure is simply unworkable and it is a major barrier to the industry undertaking new housing projects in NSW” – CEO, Stephen Albin.
And it is all about ‘housing affordability’, which is a nice way of saying make settlement for immigrants less costly. All government needs to declare is not immigration housing, but call it ‘social disadvantage’, but don’t mention the ethnicity!
So it’s all chummy, ‘Welcome to Australia..here’s your permanent visa, here’s your baby bonus, here’s your government pro-diversity public service job, here’s your Medicare card, here’s your free childcare allowances, we’ve set you up with Centrelink payments, and yes here’s your new home. Would you like a minareted mosque with that in your neighbourhood to make you feel more at home?
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| Labor’s weekly membership recruits – more malleable than Union votes |
Who pays?
Well now we hear ‘every household in Sydney could be hit with a new tax to pay for future housing developments under a government shake-up of planning laws.’
It’s called ‘The Way Ahead for Planning in NSW‘, a Green Paper…for a ”fairer, simplified and more affordable system for infrastructure contributions”. Its authors, Tim Moore and Ron Dyer, both former state ministers, say a new tax is the only way to fund the significant gap between the amount that could be charged to developers without damaging the cost of housing affordability.
So ratepayers pay for the public infrastructure for newcomers – aka ‘asylum seekers’. Otherwise the spin goes: developer contributions could lead to delays (and dare say unwanted costs to developers) and (dare say) social disadvantage to waves of asylum seekers.
Invasion Analogy:
Carp originated in Asia and today is widely distributed throughout Europe, Canada, United States and Africa. It was imported into Australia 150 years ago for the stocking of fish dams (seemed like a good idea at the time). Carp are now distributed throughout the whole Murray-Darling Basin and as a result are an ecological problem. Carp are very mobile and find it easy to spread throughout Australia’s river systems.
Carp have affected the river environment in a number of ways. When feeding, carp are likened to a vacuum cleaner in the way they suck up everything and blow out what they do not need. Water quality is reduced when carp are feeding as they stir up sediments and increase the turbidity of the water. Carp increase erosion of stream banks, channels and levees by undermining them. In the feeding process carp uproot vegetation and as a result destroy the breeding habitat of native fish. Native fish have to compete with carp for food.
Carp numbers are now estimated to be between 70 per cent and over 90 percent of fish biomass in the rivers of the Murray-Darling Basin. Carp have been declared a pest fish in most Australian states. It is illegal to return carp to the water once you have caught them.
Brad Hazzard showing Naïve Bazza the One World Way:
Bazza: ‘See we can fit 20,000 asylum seekers in there no problem!’
Gillard’s Carbon Tax is but one impost.
But watch your rates go up with Naïve Bazza’s new